Outpatient Forced Psychiatry

More and more citizens are required to take super-powerful psychiatric drugs against their will while living in their own homes out in the community. Today 42 US states allow courts to order "involuntary outpatient commitment." An increasing number of countries are using "community treatment orders" and other techniques that make our homes into wards, our neighborhoods into psychiatric institutions.

Alison Hymes announces that Virginia has stopped a proposed outpatient commitment program which would allow many Virginians to be court ordered to take psychiatric dugs while living in their own homes.

National Public Radio's show "Justice Talking" featured discussions with representatives of 'both sides of the story' about the issue of involuntary psychiatric drugging of people out in their own neighborhoods and homes using court orders.

The proponents of expanded forced psychiatry have already lobbied for outpatient forced drugging laws in almost every state in the union. They’ve succeeded in bringing forced drugging into the homes of those targeted by such laws in most states. It is with great alarm that we have learned that the next domino to fall may be Texas.

Results from the largest randomized, double-blind trial of compulsory outpatient treatment yet conducted show that the intervention — while dramatically increasing the amount of time an individual is subjected to compulsory medical interventions (and deprived of essential liberties) — does not reduce hospital readmissions or improve social/clinical outcomes when compared to inpatient hospitalization.

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We are MFI

Samantha Johnson, psychiatric survivor, MFI intern

Samantha Johnson is a 22-year-old psychiatric survivor who is interning at the MindFreedom International office.
"I was absolutely in disbelief at how the people were treated at the hospital. It was an environment of emotional abuse interspersed with 'treatments' and 'policies' that could be more accurately described as assault. The tragic thing is that there really are some good people working there, but they are unable to provide people with the help they need inside a system that prioritizes profits over people. It might take five years of counseling for someone to truly recover from a mental health crisis, but it takes five minutes to tranquilize them.
This is why I started working with MindFreedom. For 25 years MFI has been challenging the mental health system to see us as human beings- to treat us as human beings- through peaceful activism. At MFI we emphasize individual choice, empowerment, and compassion as necessary aspects of a true healing process."